CEDENNA:

Contributes to the education of scientists qualified for developing both basic and applied research.

Investigation Areas

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Magnetic Nanostructures

The main scientific objective of our line is to contribute to the understanding and the development of fundamental knowledge needed for the development of new applications based on magnetic nanostructures. Among these applications we can mention fast nonvolatile memories, fast transference of information in nano-circuits, spintronic devices that combine electronics and magnetism, quantum storage devices, and other.

Our Group has been very active working on the following topics: classical and quantum theory of spin waves of magnets at the nanoscale; novel magnetic materials and interfaces; domain wall dynamics; and inter-element interactions. The topics listed are on the frontier of nowadays work. There are fundamental questions in these topics that we intend to address, such as the effects of geometry and roughness on the reflection and transmission of spin waves on waveguides; mechanisms for controlling the anisotropy of nanometric samples; and the preparation of nano-elements with interesting and promising magnetic and transport properties by combining different techniques such as chemical synthesis, self-organized methods, sputtering, lithography and atomic layer deposition (ALD). Regarding the characterization of nanostructures, it is conducted by SEM, EDX, VSM and AGFM. We also perform micromagnetic and Monte-Carlo simulations, using commercial and our own codes. Besides, we perform electronic structure calculations to get an initial picture of what would be the properties of several structures at the atomic level by studying clusters of atoms with shapes similar to the structures we want to study. The idea is to integrate theory and experiments, analytical calculations and numerical simulations, whenever possible.

In the field of applications, we focus on new ways to control anisotropy, due to the potential this has for technological applications. On the other hand, the classical and quantum theory of spin waves of magnets at the nanoscale has received a great deal of attraction due to claims in the sense that classical and quantum information can be stored and manipulated within the degrees of freedom of the spin chains. Finally, among the magnetic interactions that may be present in a nanoparticle array we focus on two, dipolar and RKKY, because both may produce significant changes on the properties of a system and can determine the success of patterned media in high-density information storage.

In addition we have the capacity of doing a full characterization of magnetic materials at the macro and micro scales, and also to prepare metallic thin samples, even at the nanoscale, for different applications.